Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday October 15, 2015 @06:06PM
from the you'll-take-it-and-you'll-like-it dept.

grimmjeeper writes: According to Ars Technica the Windows 10 upgrade option is being selected by default for some users. A dialogue box is appearing that only permits them to reschedule the upgrade process, not cancel it. "For the first year of its availability, Windows 10 is available for free to most Windows 7 and 8 users, and Microsoft has been trying to coax those users to make the switch by delivering the operating system through Windows Update. Until now, the OS has been delivered as an optional update; while Windows Update gives it prominent positioning, it shouldn't be installed automatically. This system has already generated some complaints, as Windows Update will download the sizeable operating system installer even if you don't intend to upgrade any time soon, but, over the last couple of days, the situation seems to have become a little more aggressive. We've received a number of reports that people's systems are not merely downloading the installer but actually starting it up."Update: 10/16 11:35 GMT by S: Microsoft said, "In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing the check."

..however it fits PERFECTLY with their recent actions, so I REALLY DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT TO BE A MISTAKE.

like, first they make the fucking popup come up every 15 mins or so to get you to download the update, then they port some 'diagnosis'(presumably to diagnose why people are not installing windows 10) back to 7/8, then they move to downloading the update in background regardless.

THEN they start popping up the installer WITH ONE BUTTON.

would MS do such a mistake? I mean, this is the microsoft that has already for few years perverted their own UI standards to coax people into making choices they want the user to make rather than giving the user a clear choice to decline, there's ample examples of that behavior such as on new windows installation making screens that have a button element and another button that's a link element that _functionally_ both act as buttons - the one that is made to look not like a button however is the choice they don't want you to make - so it would fit perfectly with that UI shenigans to make on purpose a popup that had no cancel button on it since "hey if the user closes the dialog then that counts as a cancel, amirite???".

it's bullshit. and it's remarkable bullshit coming from a company that had nailed the easy to use window UI down 15 years ago already and should just have stuck with that and their own guidelines that they did with real science and real user studies that just were done to benefit the user, since that it has been downhill for them(really, win2k era was the pinnacle, then they started skinning and just doing cutesy shit and now even worse they started to 'guide' the user).

This isn't an accident. Microsoft knows that the Windows 10 rollout has been a failure so far. Running a huge Windows 10 marketing campaign, giving away the upgrade, tricking people into installing it and now trying to force people to install it...and it still has a shitty adoption rate.

I have to disagree about the Star Trek movies. Star Trek III was pretty decent. However, you really have to think of it as the bridge between Star Trek II and Star Trek IV; the three go together as one continuous story arc, especially the latter two. Star Trek IV doesn't even make sense if you didn't watch III first.

ST 7 and 9 weren't horrible movies either, they were just blah. ST9 (Insurrection) really was more like a 2-hour TNG episode than a movie, and not one of the better ones either. But at leas

That is good but I have some VM's that run long term simulations. They can't be paused or restarted and weeks worth of data would be lost. So if a forced upgrade and restart causes us to lose data then someone will be hearing from our lawyers.

But probably not. The vms are off the network so mickysoft can't force anything on them.

I'm curious - if it's that critical why is it running on MS instead of Oracle/solaris, linux, *bsd or any of the other stuff known for stability and far less overhead? If a lawyer goes to them saying "MS whatever crashed after only a couple of weeks" the MS lawyer will just laugh and point at the bit in the fine print about fitness for use and how they don't accept responsibility for anything that critical.I have geophysical stuff here running for weeks, and there are two main things to consider:1/ Snapsho

The "bsod per day" craptitude is one thing. But you could make a case that intentionally forcing an unwanted update is on another level entirely. Wilful interference, misuse, sabotage etc - the terminology varies from place to place but it's the same thing.

I don't think any EULA that tried to exclude malice would be worth the paper it's printed on.

In that this seems like an option no one should ever be checking at all, ever.... this is something users need to decide on. There are still some incompatibilities, and honestly I still prefer the Windows 7 UI, the new start menu is obnoxious, just less obnoxious than the old. Not to mention that the "control panel" is now hidden behind a fully useless UI that lets you do nothing at all useful and hte right click menu has the stuff you really want.

This is where we need someone to add those last few features to VLC as a plugin or something instead of just hoping for someone caring within the MS media player group. I'll bet the people involved with the earlier media player are long gone and the ones there no don't have the time, resources, skill or the care factor to implement to features in the old version.Yet another argument against closed software. The people with the source code to the old version are not going to use it or let anyone else use i

Hear, hear. Originally a shortened form of "Hear him, hear him!" to vocally express agreement and encourage others to listen to someone. As opposed to simply enthusiastically announcing your presence;-)

I understand that Silicon Dust is working on a product that will do the same thing as Media Center (including DVRing protected Cable Card content).

Let's hope that it isn't as much of a system pig as View is. I have two systems talking to a HDHomeRun with a three tuner CableCard. I could run three instances of QuickView to watch three things at once, but on the same systems I cannot run even one View without image breakup.

And if it has the same unintuitive counterproductive UI that View has, it will be DOA.

I have a Windows 7 laptop that I use for playing a few games that require the GameOS from Redmond. Since I don't use it for e-mail or general web browsing (and when I do, I don't use one of the major three or four browsers), so my attack surface is a lot more limited than the average user.

That being said, I use it for playing games, and some of those games have problems with Windows 10. So after Windows Update "helpfully" downloaded SIX AND A HALF FUCKING GIGABYTES of Windows 10, and it took me two hours t

Many employers require staff to run earlier versions of Windows to maintain compatibility with certain software. I could see how this could severely interrupt workflow if pushed too aggressively.

I don't think this happens on corporate networks that use WSUS [microsoft.com]. Doesn't happen on ours, we don't even get a chance to upgrade to 10. Which is decidedly a good thing. Microsoft may be crazy, but they're not stupid.

Remember the last round with the Web browser, and later the media player? Small potatoes. Imagine what happens when someone running bootcamp runs this and borks their Mac. Or someone dual-booting Linux and completely obliterating the Linux partitions.

I don't know about on other machines, but on my laptop the upgrade didn't even touch the grub install. Grub was still installed and booting both partitions, both after I "upgraded" to Win10 and when I "downgraded" the partition back to Win8.1. And here I never thought I would say switching to Winows 8.x would be an upgrade....

You'll have a hard time making the "anti-competitive" argument, considering they're overwriting their own product. Bricking some bootcamp installs (if it happens) is more grounds for a class action suit.

And as far as Linux goes - has Microsoft ever suggested that dual booting is supported? I know their loader is technically capable of it, but being capable of it and supporting it are different things.

The web browser suit was completely different. Microsoft won (for a while) the browser war, and did so by

I'll happily stay on Win 7 until my PC breaks and it can't be fixed or until I get hardware for which there are no Win 7 drivers. Then it'll be time to switch to Linux, perhaps an Unbuntu distro or Mint, which I've heard good things about.

MS knows i"m not alone in feeling this way, and apparently my desires conflict with their business plan.

So I might as well ask now, what distro would people recommend switching to for a desktop box? Or better yet, which ones should I stay away from?

+1 to this. I actually switched my wife to Mint with Cinnamon from Mac OS. All the drivers worked without any tweaking. My wife's not technical at all, but had zero issues using the system and finds it very intuitive. She particularly likes the blend of clean aesthetics and great functionality - she's an artist, so I take her approval of the aesthetics quite seriously.

Give a good look at PCBSD.
The Linux ecosystem is currently in upheaval due to an abortion being assimilated by most distros, called systemd.
The purpose of systemd is to make the Linux desktop more "windows like". It is necessary for the Gnome desktop to function. The Gnome desktop is a pile of garbage, so don't waste your time if you can avoid it.PCBSD will run on most hardware and is simple to install and use.

Mint's a good choice if you're looking for a minimum of change. The Cinnamon desktop has a very similar workflow to Windows, and most stuff just works out of the box.

One thing though: changing your OS, especially if you're a power user, is a huge deal. You'll run into a lot of things that will annoy you or piss you off. That's natural. Linux users tend to feel the same when they have to work on Windows.

So if you want to change, follow through. Do your change, and make yourself stick with it for at leas

I'm an MS user, and just switched to Linux for my web/email machine. I found Mint to easy to use, although not as smooth as Windows. Ubuntu was ok, but their fascination with brown themes never caught my interest. Others like Red Hat, Debian, Suse etc seem more focused towards server/nerd end of the market, so Mint it is for now.

The way I got myself to switch permanently to Linux in 2005 was to run Windows XP in virtual box in OpenSuse and then Linux Mint. It was mostly for PS and a couple other programs but eventually the seamless window mode pissed me off and it was just around the time I was 95% using Linux to do all my computing.

My game / video player PC (with a Core 2 Duo motherboard) still runs XP, and I was forced to upgrade from W2K for one game. (Yes, I know it's a 64-bit CPU with a 32-bit OS.) With a modern (as in about three or four years ago) hard drive, I think it takes longer to get through the BIOS stuff than it does to actually boot XP.

As much as I hate to do it, If they don't stop this Windows 10 push garbage I'm going to turn off the automatic updates feature. I'm running Windows Media Center on a windows 7 box and I DON'T want the upgrade, at least not until there is some option for a replacement DVR solution that can playback protected content. Please Microsoft, STOP pushing this, I don't want 10 (or 8 for that matter) so stop asking.

I've noticed that Microsoft is getting really pushy about this upgrade thing and has pushed yet another update that has that annoying "Get Windows 10" icon even after I uninstalled and blocked the first update with it. I disabled the Icon notices, but I really would love to unload the new update. Anybody know which update this new one is?

All this really does is convince me that as soon as somebody can come up with a Linux alternative that his fully DRM blessed to play back protected content from my Cable Card tuner, I'm switching and ditching Microsoft and their "we rule the world, do as we say" attitude.

I already did it, and it's a PiTA because you can't entirely trust the link that tells you what the update does. Some are obvious, like anything related to "customer experience". I hid one of those just yesterday. There are about a dozen that I need to check before I install them. My only hard tie to Windows is Visual Studio. If I set aside the time to explore a cross-platform IDE and find that I like it, this nonsense will come to an end. Sorry MS. I was with you for a long time. I don't hate you.

There was something last week, under the "Important" updates, that was related to Windows 10 upgrade compatibility check. And of course, ALL important upgrades are given the same title "Important Update for 64-bit Windows Systems" or such, and if you look at the description it says some generic nonsense and you have to click on the "More info" button when then moves you over to the web browser before you can actually read it. Annoying because the browser is on the desktop and the windows update is on the

Don't you want to KNOW what's going to be loaded onto your computer BEFORE it breaks something?

Do you? Unless you have a test system to load the updates one at a time and determine if they break anything, You are just spitting into the wind here.

So, who has time to test all these patches at home anyway? Unless you do it at work and already know, who's going to take the time to test EVERY patch that MS puts out on Tuesday? So what do you prefer? Unpatched machines or waiting until I can find time to validate all the patches? Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and patch, hoping for the bes

Don't you want to KNOW what's going to be loaded onto your computer BEFORE it breaks something?

What kind of moron would use Windows of all Oses with all it's flaws and with Windows 7 now freaking 5 years of exploits all ready for Hackers to steal your credit info?!

Somebody who wanted to have his Cable Card tuner feed a DVR and be able to play protected content and not pay the Cable company boat loads of cash each month for their crappy set top boxes. Windows Media Center is the ONLY game in town and it runs best on Windows 7. I run it because there are no other options. As soon as there is another option that works, I'm jumping off the Windows ship.

It worked OK on a spare laptop I tried it with way back in the semi-public beta - figured out how to disable the most egregious annoyances to just act like the Windows 7 upgrade I actually want. I'll likely add a block on an external firewall where the hosts file no longer blocks for known MS data collection (spy) servers. I expect Microsoft to act evil wherever it can - nice to see them less suicidal-evil compared to Windows 8.

Didn't apply the update to any other systems though - found too many missing dr

has caused me to disallow it on my network due to privacy concerns. My Wi-Fi router password does not need to be stored by Microsoft. This is one of those instances where I really thank God I know and use BSD and Linux to be able to avoid the likes of this junk. I told my wife she needs to either get a MacBook or Linux replaces the Windows 7 install. I removed the MS KBs that would allow Windows 10 to be installed and also removed the additional telemetry crap. No one but me needs knowledge of my passwords.

I support quite a few companies and Microsoft have created so much hassle for me recently with this, we now try to block these updates from happening, but, like most people, the first wave caught us off guard.
Windows 10 is not compatible with 2nd gen i3/i5/i7 processors with internal graphics - it causes many BSOD and various system problems after about 30-90 minutes usage.
Intel have not to date released a driver upgrade.
Microsoft does not block these systems from upgrading to Windows 10.

I updated a freaking bunch of CoreDuo laptops (please notice the absence of the number 2 in the middle of the name) with intel graphics (granted, not integrated) with no issues. (you can search my past posts for the gory details)...

It stands to reason that if such old graphics can handle win10, so can more modern Core iX integrated graphics, with some tweaking (perhaps using the Vista/7/8 drivers instead of the out of the box 10 ones, and checking that ALL your firmware is up to the latest, no matter what t

We have 6 machines. 4 of them upgraded no problem. One had a legacy bios / efi upgrade problem. Windows 10 is nice, an improvement over Windows 7. Everyone here really likes it.

The 6th machine on the other hand is a single partition machine that has gone from XP to 8.1 without a hitch. Windows 10 repartitions the disk and leaves it unusable (RAW) every time the upgrade runs. Auto upgrade there would wipe out the machine:-(

I certainly have no interest in upgrading. My only Windows PC is used for gaming, and some light work when I want to use a larger screen. I'm happy with the setup, and don't want anyone except myself to mess around with it. Thus far, this has proven to be the case even though some people are reporting very different experiences.

Which leaves me wondering: are these reports over dramatized or do they reflect actions on Microsoft's end? I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft. They certainly have a mul

Reality. Just ran intothis. It lets me select updates, but the install is replaced with a "Download Windows 10" button, and it keeps checking the box for windows 10 for installation no matter how many times I uncheck it. Awful behavior.

Went to fire up my Windows 10 VM today. It was a technical preview which allows me to upgrade to a full Windows 10 Pro version, but I am locked out. First it said it was outdated, Then it quite updating altogether.Now it says a component expired and I need to hit F8 for recovery except nothing happens with F8.

I had it set to do perpetual updates, but at some point it broke.It said it would update, but then the update would crap out.Ah well. I fixed it all and got my new Win 10 Pro working on my VM using the following instructions someone had on the Insider Forums.

(Mine was Build 10162 and the following worked quite well!!!Back in the 90's this approach was fairly standard with dated installs that would expire. In order to update if you messed up on some dated install, you would just roll back your system clock.)

Was smooth at first, but now I'm seeing that was a mistake. These update issues are a real headache when I'm trying to get work done. Plus, I imaged to a bigger HD, windows would refuse to let me login. I ended up having to "reset" windows, which removes all apps, preserves user data, and reinstalls Windows. Now I can't activate it for some fucking reason. And when I reboot after reinstalling an app uninstalled during the reset, it tries (and fails!) to update. I'm not sure what's more frustrating: the cluster fuck that it is or Microsoft isn't saying shit about it.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and opine that MS has been "asked" to help fill up that big new NSA data center in Utah, and they really really need EVERYBODY to be running Windows 10 (or 7/8/8.1 with the spy-ware addons) to fill up that big beautful treasure trove of OUR data...... Tell me my tinfoil hat's too tight, I don't care.. Thats what it looks like to me... Thank goodness I've given up sucking from the MS tit, and moved all MY systems to Linux...

I did that (hide the Windows 10 install update). Guess what? When I "check for updates" it's back, and selected by default. What are also back are the other updates I've hidden that backport telemetry to Windows 8.1 (although they at least aren't force-selected for install). Hiding does no good.

I have Windows 8.1 on a partition for use when I absolutely can't avoid doing something under Windows (thankfully not often). Otherwise I never even touch that steaming pile and run off my Linux partition, where I can get work done without having to watch my back, not just for hackers, but to protect myself from the vendor that wants our trust and does everything possible to lose it.

To use a widly targeted and popular OS like WIndows without AV and updates is batshit insane for any system to be connected to the internet. Want to know the truth? Get an XP box with no updates connected to the internet without a firewall? Countdown to infection is around 30 to 45 seconds!

Windows by default = stealth mode firewall. Vast majority of residential users = NAT. Classic time to own scenario and arguments well past their sell-by date.

I question any user who says proudly he does not update his computer with a smile who calls himself a computer geek. I hope the Russian hackers who put flash ads with malware have not cleaned your Mom's bank account yet

Trash flash.

Oh that is right I bet you are probably one of these users who thinks if you do not install software you are 100% safe and no exploits in flash, chrome, IE, or in javascript that of course will never get patched

Want to know the truth? Get an XP box with no updates connected to the internet without a firewall? Countdown to infection is around 30 to 45 seconds!

I saw that paraded so much that eventually i tried it, and no it is complete bullshit.

You aren't as right as you think. There was a time when a fresh install of XP was indeed infected before updates could be downloaded from Microsoft. That pretty much ended with SP3. Actually, I think it was addressed with SP2, but the first SP2 also broke XP on AMD machines, causing an endless reboot cycle. Naturally I was quite biased against SP2 for that reason.

Just because your experiment failed doesn't mean that the stories are lies. I experienced that "complete bullshit", thank you very much.

That solution is only acceptable if you trust Microsoft - which I personally don't.

In fact they clearly have the better cards in the long run, in the end you would have to treat any Windows-machine as 0wned by Panella and he has full access to the programs that run while you have none.

From what I've been reading, it doesn't matter if you turn off Automatic Updates or not, it still goes right ahead and downloads and attempts to install itself.. just like any other malware.

Here's an idea: Find the executable in the Win10 install package that's run, go into it's Properties, Security tab, set 'Deny' for 'Read and Execute' for 'SYSTEM'. Should prevent the installer from running. If the OS changes the permissions against your express wishes, or it just keeps downloading new copies, then Microsoft is violating their own system security scheme; in that case, if it wasn't already time to get out, now it'll be time to get out and find a different OS. I've never been a huge fan of Microsoft (have managed to never pay for a single legal copy of any version of Windows) but I've put up with it. This behavior from them takes the cake, though; I'm done. The next box has to have something other than Windows on it. I can't tolerate an OS that countermands my express wishes and takes away all control from me like that.

From what I've been reading, it doesn't matter if you turn off Automatic Updates or not, it still goes right ahead and downloads and attempts to install itself.. just like any other malware.

I've been a bit of a MS supporter (check my post history), and brushed off most of the criticism around the MS-hate. However the tracking behaviour of Win10 has crossed the line. I've just upgraded my Win7 laptop to Linux Mint (I still find it clunky, but does the job for web/email). I can no longer support a company that disregards its customer's privacy so blatantly.

Now I have the latest version of Debian GNU/Linux installed [...] I feel like I'm missing out on getting as irritated at my OS as Windows users do.

That's because you're irritated in another way: you're missing out on working Wi-Fi and suspend. This is what happens on some battery-powered PCs if you rip out Windows and install Debian. Source [debian.org]

It is all a setup for Windows 11. Windows 11 will be subscription based even they will not be able to run non-subscription Word or Excel.

This may be a blessing in disguise. People may have strong incentives or even be forced to get away from Windows once and for all. For those who truly have no choice (whether due to genuinely irreplaceable mission-critical software or corporate fiat), they will pay up on a monthly basis (no doubt 10% discount for paying a year in advance or some such).

I'd like to believe it will send many people to Linux (sadly, not likely), but Apple is the more likely beneficiary... unless they get on the subscription ba